Yes, but the salt could also be useful for sites that require passwords to include a number, a non alphanumeric character, etc.
If this kind of thing takes off, it will become easier for dictionary based password attacks. Using this advice would go a long way towards preventing this.
Easier, yes, but not easy. A dictionary attack on 4 words is the same as brute forcing 4 letters except now instead of just 26 letters there are thousands. 2000^4 vs 26^4 = 35,000,000% more to check.